CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript Interview with Adam Schiff

Interview

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TAPPER: Joining me now is Congressman Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who led the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Chairman, I want to give you an opportunity to respond. Bolton said, the president puts his self-interests above all; he even tried to get Chinese President Xi to help him get reelected.

The Democratic chair of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, told me yesterday he's not interested in hearing from Bolton at this point. You have suggested there's a possibility you might call him before your committee. Are you planning to do so?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I think there's actually a lot of interest in Congress in hearing what Mr. Bolton has to say, as incredibly belated as it is. And I hope, when we come back into session later this week, we will have an opportunity to make a decision on that.

[16:45:06]

But look, he's made some very serious allegations against the president, some of which were known. Indeed, the president was impeached over conduct that Bolton now fully corroborates the House's case.

But we proved that during the trial. And yet there are other parts of this pattern of putting the president's interests, personal interests, above the country that are exposed for the first time, that he was reaching out to China.

In addition to the very public invitation that he -- that Trump made of China to investigate Biden, we now know, privately, he was urging President Xi to help him with the purchase of agriculture from key swing states.

So, look, I mean, these issues -- the issue involving the Turkish bank, the president undermining his own sanctions on Iran to placate autocrats, the American people ought to know the full story about this president's misconduct.

TAPPER: Well, and that's the -- that's the point that Bolton makes, is that, if the Democrats in the House had taken more time, gone through the legal processes, et cetera, to compel testimony from people such as him, that you could have built a bigger case, not just about the president allegedly leaning on Ukraine for election help, but also doing so with China and all the other allegations he makes.

He says that you committed political malpractice.

SCHIFF: Well, Jake, this is his very weak effort to rationalize why he put his own profit and greed ahead of the interests of the country.

And he's having a very difficult time, I think, making that rationalization, because what he's effectively saying is: The House should have investigated things I was unwilling to tell them about.

Now, I don't know what that means, other than, well, the House should rely on people who had more courage than John Bolton.

And we did, Fiona Hill, for example and Tim Morrison, and Colonel Vindman. But he's basically saying: The House should have done more to find out what I was concealing.

And I think that's just completely insupportable. Indeed, in every way that John Bolton condemns and indicts the president of the United States, he condemns and indicts himself for concealing this from the American people, when they really had a need to know.

The fact that John Bolton says the president put his personal interests above the country's, indeed, that's exactly what John Bolton did when he decided that he wouldn't testify during the investigation, that he would save it instead for this profit-making book.

TAPPER: So, let's talk about some of the substance in this book.

According to the original pre-redacted version of the book obtained by "Vanity Fair," President Trump allegedly told Chinese President Xi during a dinner at the G20 conference in Osaka, Japan, last summer -- quote -- "Make sure I win. I will probably win anyway, so don't hurt my farms. Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat. And make sure we win" -- unquote.

Now, one could argue that the president is saying, hey, a good trade deal would be good for me and good for the United States, and it would help my reelection. And there isn't necessarily something nefarious about that. But I'm sure that's not how you see it.

SCHIFF: No, and I don't think that's how John Bolton sees it.

And that's certainly not the pattern that we have seen with this president. What he was doing at the same time vis-a-vis Ukraine, in withholding military aid from Ukraine, there was no way, shape or form you could argue that was in the United States' national security interests. Of course, it wasn't.

But it was in Donald Trump's personal political interests. And I think this was what was driving him to urge President Xi to help his reelection. And I think you have to look at the president's conduct now through that lens. This is a president who was willing to give away important security

concerns vis-a-vis Chinese companies like ZTE and Huawei, where we have concerns that the Chinese may use that technology to spy on Americans. He was willing to give more favorable trade treatment to China.

And you also have to wonder whether the president's compliments Xi, even during a pandemic in which, at the time he was making his compliments, the president knew that Xi was concealing information about the spread of the pandemic, you have to wonder whether that, too, was motivated by the president's desire not to alienate President Xi because he needed Xi's helped in his reelection.

TAPPER: According to the original pre-redaction book obtained by "Vanity Fair," the president also told Xi -- and this is also in the book, but the language is a little different -- about the concentration camps that the Chinese have built to imprison the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group in China.

And Trump says, "Go ahead," to President Xi. "You're doing exactly the right thing" about concentration camps.

SCHIFF: Well, and that's the thing, Jake.

With that, it's a perfect illustration you cannot plausibly in any way make the argument that he's advancing U.S. interests or U.S. values by saying such things to President Xi.

[16:50:11]

Indeed, he would go and sign a bill to criticize China over imprisoning the Uyghurs. So, why is he saying something completely different and contrary to U.S. policy in private?

And the -- and the answer is to curry favor with this man who he believes can help his reelection.

We said during the trial, and John Bolton just underscored this in his book, you can't count on Donald Trump to do what's right for the country, only what's right for Donald Trump. That's exactly the premise of this book, which is that not a single decision he made of any substance departed from what he thought was in his personal interests, even when that was deeply at odds with our national interests.

TAPPER: All right, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, thanks.

And I'm told it's your 60th birthday today. Happy birthday.

SCHIFF: It's a big one. Don't know how that happened.

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