CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript Interview with Adam Schiff

Interview

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Chairman Schiff, thanks for joining us. In practical terms, what impact will this change have on your understanding of election security for you, for your members and for the American people who will be casting their votes very soon?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): And that's the biggest issue, Jim, is how will it affect the American people. I think the answer is if they're allowed to do this, to basically shut off the flow of information, the American people are not going to find out the full extent of efforts made to choose their president for them by foreign powers and particularly by Russia. So it has a real impact.

You know, if the American people are brought into the confidence of the intelligence community and are told, OK, this is what Russia is doing, this is how they're trying to influence you, it really weakens the power of foreign nations to meddle in our affairs. But that's something the President is willing, you know, to accede to. That he wants the help, I think he's made that clear over the years.

He wants whatever help he can get. He doesn't believe that he can beat Joe Biden in a fair election. And he doesn't want the American people to learn about what Russia is doing on his behalf.

The reliance on written information is wholly insufficient. We've seen the problem with that before where documents can be wordsmith, they can be technically accurate but be completely misleading. And without the ability to question intelligence officials, without the ability sometimes to put them under oath and make sure we get the full answers, we can't be confident that either Congress or the American people are going to find out what foreign nations are doing to influence their vote.

ACOSTA: And the written briefings, you said you can't just trust what's in the written briefings because a lot can be left out in the process. How far are you prepared to go to get these oral briefings? Might you subpoena the director of National Intelligence, other top officials, to get these briefings in a verbal format?

SCHIFF: You know, we will certainly consider using whatever tools we can and we must to compel them to fulfill their lawful obligation. This is not just something we want, it's something the country needs and it's something by law they're required to provide. That intelligence doesn't belong to them, it belongs to the American people.

[17:45:00]

And to give you an illustration of what I'm talking about, Jim, you might remember a month ago the director of the National Security Counterintelligence Center issued a public statement that was so generic as to be essentially meaningless. There was nothing inherently inaccurate about any sentence in that document, it just didn't tell the American people anything. And it also gave a false sense of equivalence about what Russia was doing and what China or other nations were doing.

When we had public -- when we had, not public, but when we had full House briefings, we could question those intelligence officials. Why did you leave out of that first statement that Russia was trying to denigrate Joe Biden and help the candidacy of Donald Trump? That compelled them to issue a subsequent statement and make it clear to the American people that Russia had picked a side and was once again trying to help the Trump campaign.

If we didn't have that ability to hold them to account, then we might still be relying on that rather generic and misleading statement. So this is what's really at issue and it's why, you know, we will consider, as I said, whatever tools we need to get the American people the information that they need to make an informed judgment.

ACOSTA: All right, Congressman, Chairman Adam Schiff, very important topic and I know you'll be following it. And we'll get back to you obviously with more questions about this I think between now and Election Day. Chairman Schiff, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

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