CNN "State of the Union with Jake Tapper" - Transcript Interview with Adam Schiff

Interview

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And I want to turn now to the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Congressman Adam Schiff of California.

We have a lot to get to, but, first, your reaction to what you just heard from your colleague in the Senate?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, Dana, I'm not sure where to start.

But, as you point out, what the administration is saying makes no sense, in terms of their refusal to brief Congress on Russian interference designed to help the Trump campaign. They're going to put it in writing now, instead of give us an oral briefing.

That doesn't make any sense, unless the goal is not to allow members of Congress, the representatives of the American people, to ask questions, to point out the false equivalence that the administration is trying to promulgate that somehow Russian interference in our election, Russian active measures to try to decide our election to help Donald Trump is no different than other countries are doing.

They don't want those questions answered. They don't want that information going to the public. This is what the president is after. After all, Donald Trump fired Director Maguire for briefing Congress on the fact that Russia was trying to help his campaign again. BASH: So...

SCHIFF: This president doesn't want to push back on that. He doesn't want the American people to know about it. He doesn't want to hear about Russian bounties on the heads of our troops. He doesn't want to hear about Russian convoys colliding with American forces in Syria.

BASH: So...

SCHIFF: And he sure as heck doesn't want the American people to know it either.

BASH: So, Mr. Chairman, as you know, the DNI, Ratcliffe, says his office is going to provide your committee with written reports.

Why is that not enough?

SCHIFF: Because you can make a written report, and you can state things in a written report that are not correct, and you can't be subject to questioning about it.

This is the problem we have had. The -- for example, Dana, we saw about a month ago the head of the intelligence community, his director of national counterintelligence, Bill Evanina, issue a public statement that drew a false equivalence between what Russia was doing and what China and Iran are doing.

And he was called out on it. And we had hearings in the Congress, where he could be held to account, and others could as well. And the result, Dana, was, they were forced to issue a second statement that acknowledged, no, Russia is actually intervening to help Donald Trump and denigrate Joe Biden, China has a preference.

And being able to call them out, hold them accountable, have them testify before Congress, place them under oath, if necessary, forces accountability.

When you can hide behind documents or withhold documents, and not have to answer questions about it, it lets you conceal the truth.

BASH: So...

SCHIFF: And, in this case, concealing the truth is concealing Russians are again intervening to help the president in his reelection.

The president evidently believes that he can't beat Joe Biden without getting either foreign help or disenfranchising people from voting during a pandemic, and doesn't want the country to know about it.

BASH: So, are you suggesting that the Trump administration is trying to protect Russia here?

SCHIFF: Well, the -- no, the Trump -- President Trump's motivation is, as always, solely about himself. It is to get himself reelected. And he realizes, if the country learns again that the Russians once

again are intervening to try to help him in the election, he feels that that takes away from their assistance. So, he doesn't want the American people to know about it. He doesn't want Congress to know about it.

He wants to draw some false equivalence between what the Russians are doing and others are doing. And he knows that, if and when they do come and brief Congress, we ask questions, and we can get to the bottom of things.

And that's what he doesn't want. After all, he fired a director for doing exactly this. And, sadly, the current director of national intelligence doesn't have the will or the backbone to stand up to this and undertake his lawful responsibility.

BASH: I want to play for you something that President Trump said about the reason that the DNI no longer wants to continue briefing you, your committee and others, he says, because of leaking classified information.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Director Ratcliffe brought information into the committee, and the information leaked.

Whether it was shifty Schiff or somebody else, they leak the information before it gets in. And what's even worse, they leak the wrong information. And he got tired of it. So, he wants to do it in a different form.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:20:03]

BASH: Have you or any of your staff or other Democrats on the committee leaked classified information?

SCHIFF: I haven't. My staff hasn't. I can't speak for what all the members of the committee have done or not done, including a lot of the Republican members.

Look, Dana, leaks are always improper, and, sometimes they're illegal.

But, of course, this is a falsehood, yet again another lie by the president. And, you know, of course, as you point out, it is a logical inconsistency to say, well, we're going to put it on paper, so it can't leak, rather than speak to the Congress. That doesn't make any sense.

But what is more, Dana, you can tell that this is another falsehood, a false rationalization by the president, because, after the last set of briefings before Congress, the director of national intelligence offered to brief Congress again. So, clearly, they weren't concerned about leaks after the last

briefing, or they wouldn't have come back to offer another briefing.

Something changed, Dana. And what changed is, of course, the president, probably in another fit, saying, I don't want Congress informed, because the last time that Congress was informed, the director of national intelligence had to put out another statement to acknowledge the fact the Russians are helping Donald Trump again.

BASH: So, Mr. Chairman, will you...

SCHIFF: And that's his goal, is to suppress that information.

BASH: Will you subpoena intelligence officials to appear in public in a hearing before the election?

SCHIFF: That is certainly one of the tools that we may use.

I can't speak for what decision ultimately we will make. That's a decision that will have to go to the speaker.

But we will compel the intelligence community to give Congress the information that we need. We will compel the intelligence community also to speak plainly to the American people, because, Dana, this information, this intelligence, paid for by taxpayers, doesn't belong to Donald Trump. It doesn't belong to the intelligence agencies. It belongs to the American people.

The agencies are really the custodians of that information. And the American people ought to know what Russia is doing. They ought to know their president is unwilling to stand up to Vladimir Putin. They ought to know that Senators like Ron Johnson are pushing a Kremlin false narrative about Joe Biden, and doing it knowingly.

BASH: Mr. Chairman...

SCHIFF: And that information belongs to the American people. It doesn't belong to Donald Trump.

BASH: OK.

Before we go, I really want to ask you about what's going on in Portland, Oregon. Police say that they're investigating a homicide after a person was killed last night during violent clashes there. It comes, of course, just days after two people were killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Do you have any reason to believe that Russia is trying to fuel some of the civil unrest in these cities via social media or other methods?

SCHIFF: Well, first of all, Dana, I condemn any of the violence that's going on. And I find it astounding that my colleague in the Senate can't simply condemn this.

The peaceful protests, I think, are calling out, in a very important way, the murder of so many black men and women at the hands of police. And those protests are in the best tradition of the United States. But we need to make sure that they're peaceful, as they largely have been, and that there aren't these incidents of violence.

In terms of what we can expect from the Russians or what the Russians are doing, the Russians, four years ago, Dana, exploited Black Lives Matter. They set up their own false flags online to try to divide people along racial lines.

BASH: Are they doing it now?

SCHIFF: And we have to -- they are once again doing their best in social media, in their overt media, and other means to grow these divisions again.

And I think that most pernicious, we got to -- we have to worry about their aggravating these tensions in our cities. We also have to worry about the Russians pushing out the president's false narratives about voting by mail.

But, finally, on the protests, Dana, I want to underscore something that you were asking Senator Johnson about. And that is, the president is willfully fanning the flames of this violence.

As his own adviser Kellyanne Conway said last week, they believe the violence is helpful to them. And the president is only motivated by one thing, what's in it for him. And he sees this violence and the -- and his ability to agitate more of it as useful to his campaign.

What it does to the country, the loss of life, he doesn't care; 180,000 people have died from the pandemic because of his incompetence and this malignant narcissism. And he simply not only won't act to stop the violence in the streets, but he will try to send federal National Guard forces or others to aggravate it if he can.

He will stoke it through his social media where he can, because he believes the violence helps him. That is the sad and tragic truth about this, but also about the Trump presidency more generally.

[09:25:03]

BASH: House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

SCHIFF: Thanks, Dana.

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